iPhone Slammed For "Misleading" Ads

iPhone Slammed For "Misleading" Ads

Apple has been reprimanded for a British television ad for the iPhone that the Advertising Standards Authority has called "misleading."

“All the parts of the Internet are on the iPhone.”

That was Apple’s claim in a British TV ad for the iPhone, and it proved controversial.

Two people complained to the watchdog, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), claiming that the ad wasn’t actually true. And after an investigation, the ASA has said they were right, and that the ad misled customers.

Why? Well, quite simply because the iPhone doesn’t include any proprietary software like Java or Flash in its Safari browser, so web pages seen on the iPhone might look different to those seen on a computer.

Olivia Campbell, a spokesperson for the ASA, told the BBC:

"Because the iPhone doesn’t support Flash or Java, you couldn’t really see the internet in its full glory. They made a very general claim that you can see the internet in its entirety, and actually that’s not quite true – so we’ve upheld."

Because of the ruling, the ad cannot be shown again in its existing form. There was no comment from Apple.

Showing 2 comments

  1. Susan Santiago at 9:22am 27th August 2008 I have not been impressed with the iPhones browsing abilities either.

    Apple's ads can be downright mean sometimes...
  2. Kevin Sweeney at 5:19am 27th August 2008 It's worse that that! Beyond Flash and Java, good old Javascript support on iPhone is some 80 times slower than a typical desktop or laptop computer, which means that it's also less capable at processing Web 2.0 sites. Struggling with Javascript typically means faster battery drain.
Close Suggestion FaceBook Pulls Scrabulous Internationally
View Article